


Filth

by Izzy_Grinch



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Arno's mission went wrong, Embarrassment, Feeding Kink, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Kiss, M/M, Mocking, Rescue, caring de Sade, confused Arno, escaping a chase, idk anything gets kinky around de Sade, if you don't have a secret admirer to save your pity ass you're not assassin enough, sort of???, wound treatment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-25 01:25:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16651642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Izzy_Grinch/pseuds/Izzy_Grinch
Summary: Severely wounded Arno is saved by the most unexpected person ever, for the Court of Miracles watches his every step.





	Filth

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Filth](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15591918) by [Izzy_Grinch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Izzy_Grinch/pseuds/Izzy_Grinch). 



The cripples and beggars find him. They are as feeble as he is, and as dirty as the refuse ditch where he has lost the track of slipping time long before their arrival, and every minute moves like a clumsy naked slug. The blood makes him warm and wet; the rats rustling over his clothes make him shudder, but that shudder − it’s nothing else than a death tremor, a trembling of life, struggling in disgust for his helplessness. The sore hands drag him through the non-existing streets, along those paths people cannot see, refuse to see − those backstreets of poverty and sickness, the fences of sticking bones, the flaps of vice on a grey skin. He’s cold. He’s just a gutless piece of meat, who stumbled over his own self-confidence. He’d give an entire hand now for a sip of water, even if it’s the same water he’s been laying in a second − or an eternity ago. There’s wine instead of water pouring through his numb lips; the next gulp drenches his dump wound, and he screams, constrained as if his throat is plugged with his own lungs like with some crumpled rags. But it’s just a smoke. Someone’s mouth touches his own one, two, three times, pushing in chunks of lumpy opium smoke, which is falling apart like old cotton; and then the mouth rages somewhere above his feverishly moist temple, it says: “Whose bed have you snatched them from?! I asked for the clean ones, hurry now!” He doesn’t know this mouth, but he knows the voice well. However, at some point it all becomes meaningless to him; a tingling euphoria fills his muscles, melting them from the inside, and while completely unable to open his eyes again to peer into the face of death descending to him, he falls into the black haze.

Something caresses his forehead, gelid like a gravestone, ice-cold of the morning mist, sticky and choking. The drops crawl through his eyebrows, gather in the corner of his eyes, glue his lashes together and rash further, when the eyelids startle. The marquis sponges them off his cheek with a cloth.

“...You?”

“Well, I am glad for sure that you haven’t lost your ability to feel surprised.”

The odor of an abandoned armory gets into his nostrils, heavy and dry; he turns away from the touches − the walls loop dangerously for a moment, the ceiling turns skew − and on the floor he notices piles of sheets, shred into stripes and stained with dark; a tiny housemaid carries them away silently, her eyes looking down, and no board squeaks under her feet. In the puddles of blood the lamp candles reflect, crimson-red are their lights, dancing the same way they do in the marquis’ pupils; he wipes a weakly heaving chest and flat stomach carefully around the clean bandages.

“You were bleeding like _un steak saignant_ and didn’t wake for the second bandaging, and to be honest, our dear doctor had some doubts about you. But oh, look at yourself now!”

He looks only because he has nothing else to do as he can barely move his fingers to touch the tightly wrapped side, all hot, burning and twitching inside. He looks, and then, embarrassed, pulls a coverlet on.

“I’m naked.”

“Of course you are! You were bathed, for you’d been smelling of baker’s breakfast he had yesterday, chicken litter and devil only knows what else, − quite a peculiar flavor for rare connoisseurs.”

The coverlet flies over him, blowing like a banner, and coats him from toes to chin; the fingers following its movement pick up a lock from his cheekbone and draw it aside, to the other ones, spreading on the pillow. The marquis smiles.

“Were it among Nature’s intentions that man be modest, she wouldn’t make us born naked”, he says and laughs, when Arno takes his gaze away, defenseless.

He is exhausted and wants to sleep, but both in the light or shadows the small flies flash in front of him distractingly, and the bed drifts away from under his back when he watches the curtains waving in the stiffness of a frozen, engraving-like room. And so he squints to calm the spinning and says:

“I need to send a letter.”

The marquis has a nice and clean handwriting, the quill draws long loops under the letters and taps lightly leaving commas and periods; he presses the paper to a random book, snatched from the nearest shelf, and he holds it still on his lap, while an inkwell is snuggled playfully into Arno’s loose fist.

“With your permission silently granted, I’ve changed some phrases, so their unbelievable dryness won’t give the poor addressee a severe toothache.”

Arno signs the letter, through a quill’s tip and his own numb fingers feeling the marquis’ palm under the paper he’s holding for Arno. And when de Sade leaves him with a nod as an answer to his quite gratitude, out of nowhere comes a helpless despair, ridiculous among these songs, and drunk debauchery, and carefree noises of rowdy manners and obscene jokes, coming from the outside. Nobody would ever come for him. How many greenhorns like him are dedicated to the Brotherhood? And how many actually make it back from their missions?

“You’ve been spying on me?”

The marquis sits back into a chair, holding carefully all his ribbons and laces from falling into a plate full of stewed beans, still steaming.

“Spying? Ah, such an inappropriate practice for a good man, how could I?” he bares his canines, grinning. “Peeping, maybe, a little bit. It’s more racy, don’t you think?”

The proximity of the food is oppressingly unbearable; Arno is starving, indeed, but too weak even to hold a cutlery, and so his gaze stubbornly rests against a bleak wall.

“I’m not hungry.”

“For a pork liver seasoned with nutmeg? One must have quite a courage to say so.” A knife scrapes porcelain bottom, and a fork with a piece of meat, pink where it’s been cut smoothly, stops in front of his nose, anticipating. “My dear boy, there are literally only two occasions on which you should refuse food; the first is when you’re offered a human flesh, the second is Bastille’s Sunday broth, the very existence of which make the republicanism unlikely to happen in our country. So... _s’il te plait_.”

Arno chews with a great effort, sitting himself up a little bit with his elbows; the marquis’ attention is persistent and almost tangible, it’s a torture − a torture, exquisite in its innocence. The marquis purrs in a velvet voice:

“You can stay here for as long as you need to − or even longer if you wish so. _Cour des Miracles_ will look after you, _mon chéri_.”

He offers Arno a handkerchief, slightly perfumed with jasmine, and, caressing his wrist fugitively, puts a tiny bell into his palm − for the servants awaiting in the corridor for his requests. And when de Sade shuts the door behind himself, Arno listens to his withdrawing footsteps, but only hears his own heart, pounding heavily in the ears.

**Author's Note:**

>  _un steak saignant_ − rare cooked meat  
>  _s’il te plait_ − please  
>  _mon chéri_ − my dear
> 
> *Opium is a pain killer  
> *Beans & liver dishes are recommended for blood loses  
> *It doesn’t really improve the plot, but the phrase about Nature and being born naked was really said (well, written) by de Sade, in slightly different words


End file.
